Restoring Layered Landscapes

History, Ecology, and Culture

Edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick

Draws upon a diverse set of international perspectives from established scholars in environmental philosophy, geography, environmental history, and sociology to form new visions for restoration that embraces social and ecological histories and values

Presents a new approach to ecological restoration that attends to concerns about historical fidelity while also recognizing the role of human influences and changing environments of the Anthropocene

Contributions include a mix of theoretical concern along with specific, case-based examples that connect theory to practice

Restoring Layered Landscapes

History, Ecology, and Culture

Edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick

Description

Restoring Layered Landscapes brings together historians, geographers, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars to explore ecological restoration in landscapes with complex histories shaped by ongoing interactions between humans and nature. For many decades, ecological restoration - particularly in the United States - focused on returning degraded sites to conditions that prevailed prior to human influence. This model has been broadened in recent decades, and restoration now increasingly focuses on the recovery of ecological functions and processes rather than on returning a site to a specific historical state. Nevertheless, neither the theory nor the practice of restoration has fully come to terms with the challenges of restoring layered landscapes, where nature and culture shape one another in deep and ongoing relationships.

Former military and industrial sites provide paradigmatic examples of layered landscapes. Many of these sites are not only characterized by natural ecosystems worth preserving and restoring, but also embody significant political, social, and cultural histories. This volume grapples with the challenges of restoring and interpreting such complex sites: What should we aim to restore in such places? How can restoration adequately take the legacies of human use into account? Should traces of the past be left on the landscape, and how can interpretive strategies be creatively employed to make visible the complex legacies of an open pit mine or chemical weapons manufacturing plant?

Restoration aims to create new value, but not always without loss. Restoration often disrupts existing ecosystems, infrastructure, and artifacts. The chapters in this volume consider what restoration can tell us more generally about the relationship between continuity and change, and how the past can and should inform our thinking about the future. These insights, in turn, will help foster a more thoughtful approach to human-environment relations in an era of unprecedented anthropogenic global environmental change.

Chapter 14: Layered Landscapes as Models for Restoration and Conservation David Havlick and Marion Hourdequin

Index

Restoring Layered Landscapes

History, Ecology, and Culture

Edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick

Author Information

Marion Hourdequin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College.

David Havlick is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.

Contributors:

Dr. Peter Coates is Professor of American and Environmental History at the University of Bristol, UK. He specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century American (U.S.) history, especially environmental history. He has written books on a variety of subjects, including Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times (University of California Press, 1998/2005); Salmon, a Holly Deary is a Ph.D. student in Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She graduated from the University of St Andrews with a B.Sc (Hons) degree in Geography, after which she worked in UK marine conservation policy and designated protected areas. Her current research interests lie in the areas of environmental management, nature conservation, and land use policy, and her doctoral work focuses on wild land management in the Scottish Highlands and the emerging environmental ethic of Dr. Martin Drenthen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). He has published about the significance of Nietzsche's critique of morality for environmental ethics, the concept of wildness in moral debates on ecological restoration, ethics of place, and environmental hermeneutics. He is author of Bordering Wildness: The Desire for Wilderness and the Meaning of Nietzsche's Critique of Morality for Environmental Ethics [2003, in Dutch]. He co-edited Ethics of Science Communication (2005, in Dutch], New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity (Springer 2009), Place: Philosophical Reflections on Connectedness with Nature and Landscape [2011, in Dutch], Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (Fordham University Press, 2013), Environmental Aesthetics: Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground (Fordham University Press, 2014), and Old World and New World Perspectives in Environmental Philosophy (Springer 2014). His most recent research focuses the relation between rewilding landscapes, cultures of place, and moral identity.

Dr. Matthias Gross is professor of environmental sociology at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, and, by joint appointment, the University of Jena, Germany. His recent research focuses on alternative energy systems, risk and ignorance, ecological restoration and design, and experimental practices in science and society. He is a founding editor of the journal Nature + Culture. Publications include the books Inventing Nature: Ecological Restoration by Public Experiments (Lexington Books, 2003); Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design (MIT Press, 2010); and his most recent monograph, Renewable Energies (with R. Mautz, 2015, Routledge).

Dr. David Havlick is associate professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. He is the author of No Place Distant: Roads and Motorized Recreation on America's Public Lands (Island Press, 2002), and publications in Science, Ecological Restoration, Progress in Physical Geography, Conservation, and High Country News. He is a co-founder of Wild Rockies Field Institute, and has degrees from Dartmouth College, the University of Montana, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Alan Holland is Emeritus Professor of Applied Philosophy, Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, Lancaster University, England, UK. Dr. Holland is an environmental philosopher and the author of Environmental Values (with John O'Neill and Andrew Light, Routledge, 2007). He also co-edited Animal Biotechnology and Ethics (with Andrew Johnson, Springer, 1997); and Global Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century (with Keekok Lee and Desmond McNeill, Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

Dr. Marion Hourdequin is associate professor of Philosophy and director of the Environmental Program at Colorado College. She is the author of Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice (Bloomsbury, 2015), and publications in Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Her research focuses on collective action problems such as climate change, moral learning and moral motivation, and the ethics of ecological restoration. She has earned degrees from Princeton University, the University of Montana, and Duke University.

Dr. Mrill Ingram is Associate Project Director, Farley Center for Peace, Justice and Sustainability, Madison, WI. Dr. Ingram is the co-author of The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks (with Raul Lejano and Helen Ingram, MIT Press, 2013) and was formerly editor of the journal Ecological Restoration. Her scholarship focuses on human-nonhuman relations, geographies of knowledge, science and environmental policy, ecological restoration, and alternative agriculture. She has published specifically on microbial biopolitics in food safety, alternative farmer networks in the U.S., and the making of U.S. federal organic regulations.

Dr. Jozef Keulartz is Associate Professor of Applied Philosophy, Wageningen University, Netherlands. Dr. Keulartz is an environmental philosopher with an emphasis on science, technology, and nature. He is author of The Struggle for Nature: A Critique of Radical Ecology (Routledge, 1998); and co-editor of Pragmatist Ethics for a Technological Culture (Kluwer, 2002); New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity (Springer, 2009); and Environmental Aesthetics: Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground (Fordham University Press, 2014). He has published in journals including Science, Technology, and Human Values; Frontiers in Ecology; Environmental Values; Environmental Ethics; Landscape and Urban Planning; and Restoration Ecology.

Dr. Fredric L. Quivik is an associate professor of history in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. Before moving to Michigan Tech in January 2010, he worked for many years as an expert witness (expert historian) in Superfund and related environmental litigation, including the Clark Fork Superfund case, U.S. v. ARCO. He has also served as a consultant in the historic preservation field, specializing in cultural resources that have an engineering or industrial character. Much of his work in litigation and historic preservation has involved the history of mining in the American West. A graduate of St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota's School of Architecture, he has a master's degree in historic preservation from Columbia University and a PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He has published several articles on topics at the intersection of history of technology and environmental history, and he is the editor of IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology.

Dr. John H. Spiers is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Boston College. His research focuses on how civic and social activists have shaped metropolitan development and environmental protection in the United States during the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is currently revising a book manuscript entitled, Contesting Growth: Politics, Social Action, and the Environment in Metropolitan Washington that will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press for its series on Politics and Culture in Modern America. He teaches courses on U.S. environmental and urban history, American politics, and the history of modern empires.

Dr. Jennifer Welchman is Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Canada. Dr. Welchman's areas of specialization include ethics, history of ethics, and applied ethics. She is the author of Dewey's Ethical Thought (Cornell University Press, 1995) and editor of The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings in Virtue Ethics (Hackett, 2006). She has also published in journals including Environmental Ethics, Philosophy and Geography, Journal of Social Philosophy, and the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. She is currently working on a monograph, tentatively titled, The Ethics of Environmental Stewardship: a Pragmatic Approach.

Restoring Layered Landscapes

History, Ecology, and Culture

Edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick

Reviews and Awards

"Reading this book gave a wide and thorough understanding of the many aspects that belongs to the effort of restoring (layered) landscapes." -- Environmental Values